Terminus
by Kittiko-Blues
Summary: When all you have left to fight for is your own miserable life. Daniels-oriented.


_**Short one-shot. Trying my hand at digging into Mr. Daniels's personality. He is such an intriguing character; makes me wish he had more screen time in the movie. :P  
"The Mummy" & Mr. Daniels: (c) Stephen Sommers/Universal Pictures**_

**Terminus**

It takes a lot to break a man. It can be any number of things, be it physical, emotional, material, psychological. Even the toughest and most ironclad of men will not admit that there is an Achilles heel sewn into their bodies' connecting fibers somewhere. When that right nerve is hit or pinched, down they go, incapacitated to the most awful extent and wondering what had happened to expose it.

For Daniels, that was pretty much what it felt like.

An air of weariness and trepidation had settled around him, and it was so thick that his lungs felt constricted every time he tried sucking in a deep breath. He was not normally a man to feel such a depressing combination of elements. In fact, he hardly let on that he harbored any emotions at all. A form of weakness, as he had always felt.

And he hated looking weak.

No matter of denial could convince him of that now though. It was all staring at him clear in the face, and he was powerless to ignore it.

He was the last one, and he was alone.

Those images, the very sights of Burns and Henderson, were seared into his mind.

He had stared death in the face before, but not like this. To see the withered, dehydrated husks of his once flesh-and-bone comrades had struck a nasty blow to his psyche. His vocal chords could barely conjure a scream of any kind. He was stunned into silence, and he felt a pounding in his chest that exploded into piercing fragments of grief and bitter guilt.

The icy blood in his veins was the first thing to thaw inside him. Years of hardening and sharpening his razor-like tongue and impeccable sense of bravery had completely overshadowed the quarantined feelings that resided in his mostly dormant heart. Whatever he felt for Burns and Henderson was now surfacing like a great leviathan, thrashing and powerful. His best friends, his only friends, were gone. For the first time in his life, he felt completely alone, helpless. It was like a great, gaping hole was carved out of whatever was left of his shattered constitution, and all those repressed emotions were slowly plugging it up until it felt like someone had filled his chest cavity with cement.

The blood seeping out of the bullet wound in his left arm was warm; he missed them, and he missed them terribly.

It seemed that they were the only two who could and would put up with him. All those times, wrestling with his penchant for heavy drinking and womanizing and making a rowdy fool of himself, dragging his drunken ass through the dirty streets back to his room so he could sleep it off; it was a wonder Burns and Henderson still had the patience for him. Henderson, the blissfully ignorant son-of-a-bitch with an addiction to tobacco chews; and Burns, always trying to act tough even though he hadn't one mean bone in his body.

And Daniels himself, darkly sardonic with a short-fused temper that ignited just as quickly as he could pull his gun from its holster. Perhaps the closest thing to his heart was the flask of whiskey he kept in his pocket; if anything else was, he hardly ever let on.

Yet, Henderson and Burns stayed with him, because he was their friend.

The realization of being completely alone and vulnerable was hard for the soldier of fortune to swallow. His reputation for being unquestionably fearless and able to stare down adversity was hanging in the balance. It wasn't a question of brawn anymore though; he had to outsmart this undead terror that was on his tail. Sure, he had strength in numbers with O'Connell and his ilk, but it wasn't the same without Burns and Henderson. The triumvirate Daniels once belonged to was now defunct. He was on his own.

No amount of hard liquor could steady the man's nerves at this point. It left a warm, static feeling in his belly and he failed to keep himself from breaking out in a cold sweat. It was the last drink he could smuggle into his body before they all took off for the Museum of Antiquities; their last chance at hope for beating this unstoppable creature. He silently dedicated his drink to the memory of Burns and Henderson, and prayed to God that he would make it out of this debacle alive.

God willing, he would not break under the pressure. He would not appear weak, defeated, terrified. He would not let the deaths of his friends hinder him from continuing to fight for his own miserable life.

Without Burns and Henderson, there was no one left to give a damn about Mr. David Daniels than Daniels himself.


End file.
